Paul Haire

Posts by Paul Haire

I watched the rugby on Saturday night, Scotland vs Ireland, and I drank too much as usual. I had to nip out of my 9 o'clock class the next day a few times to vomit in the bathroom. But what do you expect when you have class at 9 o'clock on a Sunday morning.

We watched the game in The Den bar, Sanlitun, which is full of foreigners and hookers who charge 1000 kuai a night. I was with my friends – an Englishman, a Canadian and another Scot. We settled into our usual place at the corner of the bar. It’s a rubbish place to watch the games from, because you can't see the screens properly, but it's always empty and it's sort of our home now. The waitress remembered us from last time.

Beijing is just about the perfect cycling city. It’s flat as a pancake, with huge empty cycle lanes and hutongs crying out to be explored, whether in shorts and tshirt on a warm autumn evening or wrapped up to the nines on a freezing winter's day. Hidden gems are behind every corner – from chuanr kebab joints to craft brew pubs.

This is a collection of snapshots from bike rides I made from Fuchengmen, in the west half of central Beijing, to a teahouse near Yonghegong Lama Temple. It was a journey I made many times, and a route that combined the best of Beijing. This was in 2007, when China was new and shiny to me, everything seemed possible, and PM 2.5 hadn’t been invented yet.

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